Choice of Style
by Lucillia
Summary: Back when the First Doctor was getting used to wearing trousers after a lifetime of wearing robes on Gallifrey, a chance encounter outside of a pub causes a major change to the Doctor's wardrobe. Jamie would probably be proud...


While he waited for Susan to get back from school each day, the Doctor tended to go on walks in order to get used to his new trousers which still felt awkward. Having not been in the Chancellery guard, he'd had little to no reason to wear trousers on Gallifrey where long flowing robes had been de rigueur for generations upon generations, especially for graduates of one of the Time Lord Academies. Having not grown up with trousers, he was only just getting used to all the odd and uncomfortable places they chafed.

As he passed a pub, a large ginger haired fellow who had the temerity to dress in gender inappropriate clothing was being thrown out of it.

"You know," he said conversationally to the man on the ground, rather than walking away as he felt he should've since it wasn't really any of his business, "You might get better service if you didn't wear a skirt."

"Are you makin' fun of mah kilt?!" the apparently intoxicated fellow who was sprawled out on the pavement asked belligerently.

When he turned up at the TARDIS fifteen minutes later with a black eye and a split lip, the Doctor looked up the term "kilt" and received a bit of a revelation. Fifteen minutes after reading the information on kilts, and after resolving to go back in time to make it an actual tartan so it would be proper, the Doctor was holding a kilt whose pattern was in the oranges and reds of the Prydonian Academy.

"Much better," he said a few minutes later when he'd replaced his thrice-damned trousers and walked around a bit to see if this particular substitution would be an acceptable improvement.

**One Regeneration Later:**

"You don't sound Scottish." Jamie said, dubiously eying the man whose kilt identified him as being from one of the islands on the North Sea.

"Ah well, when you learn English from the British..." the small man in the kilt, over-sized black coat, wrinkled dress shirt, and bowtie replied.

**A Regeneration After That:**

"I wouldn't mind more shirts and jackets like these," the Doctor said as he made his sartorial demands known to the Brigadier. "But, as for the trousers..." he winced as he adjusted the trousers he'd seriously regretted stealing from the hospital. It was probably his fault for not getting used to trousers centuries before, but he'd never really felt the need to do so since there was an acceptable non-bifurcated garment for males on this planet.

"I'll see what I can do." the Brigadier replied, remembering the kilted duo who'd gotten the world out of a couple jams and being happy to have some form of confirmation that the stranger standing in front of him wasn't an impostor.

**A Regeneration After That:**

"What's so funny Romana?" the Doctor asked.

"Your scarf and your skirt match." Romana replied, looking amused.

"I've told you a hundred times that it's a kilt." the Doctor replied, sounding somewhat resigned. The purple and burgundy pattern of his current kilt probably wasn't helping matters any. He really shouldn't have changed out of the old brown and Khaki green one.

Romana who'd seen pleated skirts the length and pattern of the "kilt" the Doctor was wearing pointedly said nothing. The garment that the Doctor was wearing was shockingly inappropriate for either gender on Gallifrey, but he'd managed to get away with it because it was a legitimate Tellurian style of dress, as was the rest of the rather eclectic outfit he used to wear before he'd recently changed his clothes to a more uniform color.

**A Regeneration After That:**

The beige colored kilt he'd found in the room that was apparently meant for him after he'd discovered his new favorite hat and jacket wasn't strictly traditional, but it went well with the outfit, so he wasn't complaining.

"You'd think that since he seems to be ditching everything, he would've ditched the kilt as well." Tegan said when she and the others finally caught up to the newly regenerated Doctor who'd unraveled his scarf, shuffled off his old clothes, and ripped up his waistcoat, leaving the lot in a trail behind him and gotten a look at his new outfit.

**A Regeneration After That:**

"So, what do you think Peri?" the Doctor asked his companion who had followed him to the wardrobe and watched as he picked out his new outfit.

Peri's brain hit the blue screen of death as it tried to process the entire outfit at once. The only parts of it that actually matched were the yellow and black cuff sleeves on the ridiculous multicolored monstrosity of a coat and the yellow and black tartan of the kilt the Doctor was wearing underneath.

**A Regeneration After That:**

The Rani busied herself with examining the racks full of plaid skirts while the Doctor picked out his new outfit. Personally, she thought this to be a waste of time. Back on Gallifrey, fashion was rather uniform and had more to do with the station one occupied than with one's personal preferences, so there was no need to find a look that defined oneself following a regeneration. The Doctor had always been a bit of an oddball however.

"How about this one?" the Doctor asked as he wasted her time with yet another outfit, apparently having fun screwing around with her.

"No," he said, immediately rejecting it while she was busy formulating a reply that rather tactfully didn't mention the skirt he was wearing. But then again, the skirts practically defined the Doctor following his departure from Gallifrey.

Eventually, the Doctor emerged from the back of the wardrobe in a beige jacket, sweater vest with a shirt and tie underneath, and a matching plaid scarf and skirt.

"That's excellent!" the Rani exclaimed in imitation of the Doctor's companion, wanting to get the show on the road.

**A Regeneration After That:**

He didn't know where he was, he didn't know who he was, he didn't know why he was there, but one thing he did know was that the trousers he'd stolen from the employee lockers chafed something fierce. He would've pulled them off at the first opportunity, but unfortunately the only thing he had to replace them was a sheet, which part of himself firmly told him wasn't something he could go running around in.

An hour later, as he was riding around with Doctor Grace Holloway whose face he recognized, though he didn't entirely know where he recognized it from, he saw a flash of something familiar.

"Stop!" he yelled, causing the woman to slam on her brakes and nearly causing the car behind to slam into them. "Please go back, I thought I saw something..."

The woman made a U-turn at the next light and slowly drove until he saw what had caught his attention again. Parking and crossing the street, they made their way to the store whose window display had caught his eye.

"A skirt?!" Doctor Holloway said ten minutes later. "You want a skirt?!"

He looked down at the plaid pleated knee-length garment that seemed right to him somehow and looked like it would match the clothing he'd taken from the hospital.

"Why not?" Doctor Holloway groaned. "After all, this _is_ San Francisco..."

**A Regeneration After That:**

After exiting the abode of the Sisterhood of Karn, he looked down at his clothing once more, feeling something wasn't right. Eventually, it came to him. Blue. Blue on blue. Somehow, the blue seemed more suited to a more peaceful time. He needed a different color.

Red.

Red would be better.

It would hide the blood more easily.

**A Regeneration After That:**

He never knew why he'd gone back to the blue after regenerating. Sure, it was a denim Modern kilt rather than the custom sky blue on navy blue tartan he used to wear before...before, but it was still a color that he had mentally associated with peace back then, and he was feeling far from peaceful. Currently, the young woman from the shop that he'd saved from the Autons was giving his kilt dubious glances.

"Speaking of things planets have," Rose said, breaking the silence. "Do they all wear skirts on your planet?"

"It's a kilt!" he replied.

Rose just laughed. He liked that laugh. He didn't know why. He liked Rose without knowing why as well. When he saw her, he felt something he'd thought he'd lost long ago...Hope.

**A Regeneration After That:**

"Well, at least now you've got the Scottish accent to go with the kilt." Rose said when they were finally on the ground after the incident with the Sycorax.

"I do, don't I. Jamie would be proud." the Doctor replied in said Scottish accent which had replaced his "Northern" one. "Speaking of kilts..."

The Doctor who was still clad in Rose's mother's boyfriend's pyjamas turned and made his way to the wardrobe picking out a long coat that had immediately caught his eye and looking for something to go with it, wondering if the coat was a sign that he was going to go with a more Western look, even if he thought he would look completely ridiculous in a Stetson.

Eventually, he emerged from the wardrobe wearing the long coat over a brown suit jacket with blue pinstripes, a blue dress shirt, a brown and blue tie, and a kilt of brown and blue tartan that he'd found at the back of the wardrobe where he'd thrown it lifetimes ago when he'd found it didn't match the blue velvet jacket that the Brigadier had acquired for him shortly after hiring him as the Scientific Advisor for U.N.I.T..

**A Regeneration (or two) After That:**

"Trousers. I hate trousers." the Doctor grumbled as he pulled on the trousers that he'd stolen from the room where the hospital's staff stored their clothing when they were on-duty. Unfortunately, all of the Hospital's male staff wore trousers, as did most of the female staff for that matter, and the only vaguely kilt-like object he'd found had a floral print.

"Note to self, check to make sure the wardrobe didn't burn at the first available opportunity, and see if there's anything there that'll go with tweed." he said as he made his way to the roof to meet the Atraxi.

**A Regeneration After That:**

"Kidneys! I've got new kidneys!" he exclaimed before his attention was drawn towards the upper reaches of the console room "I don't like the color."

"What? Of your kidneys?" the girl who was standing there said.

"I don't like that color either." he said as he looked down at what he was wearing and feeling a vague bit of distaste for the color of his kilt.

The girl stood there stupidly staring at him.


End file.
